Seeking shelter from Syria's civil war

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A Syrian family crosses the Tigris river to seek refuge in northern Iraq. "Their sense of uncertainty was really palpable," photographer Ivor Prickett said.

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Mohammed, 22, was injured in March 2013 when his family home in Qusayr, Syria, was hit by government shelling. His uncle was killed, and many of his family members were injured in the same incident. He now lives as a refugee with his wife and young child in Tripoli, Lebanon.

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A Turkish man throws a bottle of water across the barbed-wire border fence to a Syrian man waiting on the other side.

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Syrian refugees attend a party to celebrate the end of their school year. Their school was set up to specifically cater to the thousands of Syrian children living as refugees in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli.

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A Syrian refugee digs ditches around his family's tent in the Domiz camp in Iraq.

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Syrian refugees cross the border into Turkey after fleeing fighting between Kurdish forces and the ISIS militant group.

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A young Syrian refugee who was waiting to enter Turkey is treated for burns sustained when Turkish police fired tear gas across the border to disperse protesters.

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A Syrian woman and her child walk through the Domiz refugee camp in northern Iraq.

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Nizal, 14, is tended to by his mother and a relative after falling ill. The family was living in a small tented area on the outskirts of Adana in southern Turkey.

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A family of Syrian refugees huddle around the heater while watching television in the unfinished building where they have found refuge in Turkey.

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Fatima, 18, holds her 2-month-old baby, Zeino.

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Story highlights

Ivor Prickett photographed Syrians who have fled the civil war there

His photos remind us of their humanity and show how they are adapting to their new lives

With more than 4 million Syrians living in other countries such as Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey, the international community is still grappling with how to cope with a tragedy of this magnitude.

Ivor Prickett, a documentary photographer, has been following the mass exodus of Syrians who survived the destruction of their towns.

"It is mind-boggling in terms of its scale and magnitude," he said.

"Seeking Shelter" is Prickett's photographic amalgam of situations, places and events relating the Syrian diaspora -- a quiet opportunity to share the lives of Syrian refugees.

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"I am not a front-line photographer at all," Prickett said. "I am much more interested in slow-paced reporting and photography and spending time with people as much as possible."

Photographer Ivor Prickett

Spending a few years with people in Damascus before the war helped him understand the Syrian character.

"They are very open, friendly people," he said, adding that his subjects were more than willing to allow their stories to be told.

He started in November 2012, after the Battle of Aleppo -- coined "the Mother of All Battles" by Syrians -- caused 200,000 people to flee in a few days.

A year later, Prickett made the journey with a family from Aleppo as they crossed the Tigris river into northern Iraq.

A photo of the family, seen first in the gallery above, captures many overwhelming emotions -- terror, despair, uncertainty.

"Their sense of uncertainty was really palpable," Prickett said. "(They) were lucky in the sense that they managed to reach that side of country and were allowed to enter northern Iraq, which the Kurds regard as their closest thing to a homeland. That said, they were incredibly tense and uncertain, having never been to Iraq before."

With some knowledge of Arabic, Prickett got to know the people in his photos and listened to their stories.

"Understanding what they've been through will help me make the right kind of picture," he said. "And also the more time you spend with someone, the more you can kind of relate to them and allow them to relate to you ... the more access they are going to give to you."

Prickett reminds us of their humanity by choosing moments of routine and intimacy to show how they are adapting to a new life away from home.

And in moments of turmoil, which were often too many, he did not shy away from the camera.

"When the siege of Kobani started, I was there right at the border working for the (U.N. refugee agency)," he said. "It was overwhelming ... boiling-hot, and thousands and thousands of people were clogged up on side of the border fence with Turkey. ...

"It was a very desperate, apocalyptic situation that I never had seen on that scale before. Particularly shocking to see that in Turkey, where just around the corner you see beautiful beaches.

"I'm not a hardened person nor emotionally detached in any way, so it is really, really hard to comprehend something on that scale."